At Famosa Slough, a tidal inlet near Point Loma, a mullet leaped from the water last week, chased by a cormorant. A clapper-rail chick trailed its parents on a crab hunting expedition. And a little blue heron waddled through the flats, sporting splotchy gray and white feathers.

“This is the most miserable-looking bird you’ll ever see,” said veteran San Diego environmentalist Jim Peugh, laughing fondly at the awkward adolescent as a sleek gray adult chased it off.

The slough itself underwent a similar transformation — from unsightly to vibrant — largely as a result of Peugh’s efforts. Once a mud flat overrun by invasive ice plant and littered with old tires and shopping carts, it’s now a model urban estuary.

It’s also Peugh’s backyard, the place that drew his attention to the natural world and the one still closest to his heart. It’s what turned him from a neighborhood volunteer into a leading conservationist in the county.

This month, Peugh received San Diego Coastkeeper’s “Coastal Champion” honor for his efforts to preserve or restore sites such as the San Diego River, the South San Diego National Wildlife Refuge, the Tijuana River Valley, least-tern nesting sites at Mariner’s Point — and his beloved Famosa Slough.

“Jim is the environmental conscience of the community, low-key in style but forceful in message,” San Diego Coastkeeper board President Jo Brooks said at the award presentation.

Peugh has made his mark through a combination of grass-roots, on-the-ground action and political negotiation, said those who have worked with him over the years.

Besides serving as longtime chairman for Friends of Famosa Slough, he is conservation chairman for the San Diego Audubon Society and a board member for the San Diego River Park Foundation. He also has held seats on at least 19 other public boards and committees.

“He knows how to get together with people at any level ... and work with them to get something accomplished,” said Phil Pryde, past president of the San Diego Audubon Society. “Jim never met a bureaucracy that intimidated him.”

Peugh, 74, was born in Virginia, lived in Long Beach during his middle and high school years and then studied physics at Occidental College in Pasadena. He moved to Point Loma for a civilian job at the Navy Electronics Laboratory, now known as SPAWAR, where he worked on sonar systems, undersea warfare and ocean engineering.

The home he shared with his wife and three children overlooked the Famosa Slough, where he and his children would go to pick up trash. The slough at that time lacked the diverse wildlife it now hosts, but Peugh could see its potential.

He became involved with local efforts to clean up the slough in the mid-1980s, although “my level of skill was nothing more than sitting with an ironing board in front of a grocery store asking people to answer questions,” he said.

Peugh quickly got up to speed, becoming a board member for Friends of Famosa Slough in 1986 and chairman in 1988 — a position he has held since.